Inevitable, Flexible, Expandable \u3cem\u3eCaperton\u3c/em\u3e?

When Caperton v. Massey came before the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2009, the Court ruled that the due process right to a fair trial required Justice Benjamin to recuse himself. Many commentators view Caperton as a limited decision because it set stringent criteria for future due process recusal claims, but the revolutionary ferment surrounding judicial elections could make Caperton-style fact patterns more common in the years to come. The fundamental fears that the Court expressed—that impartial justice and public confidence in the courts could be imperiled—will be stoked and aggravated by the financial arms race that now accompanies judicial elections. The new politics of judicial elections made a Caperton fact pattern inevitable. As court campaigns grow more corrosive, lower courts will have more opportunities to apply and expand Caperton’s principles to enforce recusal more seriously. As a result, Caperton could mark the tangible beginning of a new consciousness about the role of money in judicial elections

Transcript: Session 1: One Symptom of a Serious Problem: \u3cem\u3eCaperton v. Massey\u3c/em\u3e

Consider this extraordinary narrative: A resident of a small town brings a tort action against a big corporation and wins a multi-million-dollar jury trial award. While the judgment is pending on appeal to the state supreme court, one of the liberal justices known to often side with tort plaintiffs is up for judicial re-election. To ensure the election of a new justice more sympathetic to corporate defendants, the corporation’s CEO pumps in an extraordinary amount of campaign money, both as candidate contributions and as independent political action committee advertising expenditures. Predictably, the newly elected justice casts the tie-breaking vote in favor of the corporation and reverses the jury trial victory. If this sounds like a narrative from a John Grisham novel, that is because it actually is. I have summarized the plot of The Appeal, Grisham’s 2008 bestseller. When Grisham was interviewed on NBC’s Today Show during his promotional tour, the host, Matt Lauer, asked whether such a chain of events could ever realistically occur. “It’s already happened,” Grisham answered. “It happened a few years ago in West Virginia. A guy who owned a coal company got tired of getting sued, and he elected his own man to the state supreme court.” Reality is, indeed, stranger than fiction. The amazing case to which Grisham referred is, of course, the subject of this panel’s discussion—Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal

Poor Vitamin K Status Is Associated With Low Bone Mineral Density and Increased Fracture Risk in End-Stage Renal Disease.

Chronic kidney disease and osteoporosis are major public health problems associated with an aging population. Vitamin K insufficiency is prevalent among patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Preliminary data indicate that poor vitamin K status may compromise bone health and that increased inflammation may be in the causal pathway. We performed an ancillary analysis of data collected in the frame of prospective observational cohort studies exploring various aspects of bone health in de novo renal transplant recipients to investigate the association between vitamin K status, inflammation, bone mineral density, and incident clinical fractures. Parameters of mineral metabolism (including biointact PTH and FGF23, sclerostin, calcidiol, calcitriol) and inflammation (CRP and IL-6), osteoprotegerin, bone turnover markers (P1NP, BsAP, and TRAP5B), and dephosphorylated-uncarboxylated Matrix Gla Protein (dp-ucMGP) were assessed on blood samples collected immediately prior to kidney transplantation in 468 patients. Areal bone mineral density (aBMD) was measured at the lumbar spine and femoral neck by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry within 14 days posttransplant. Poor vitamin K status, defined by dp-ucMGP >500 nmol/L, was highly prevalent (90%). High dp-ucMGP levels independently associated with elevated inflammatory markers and low aBMD. No associations were observed between vitamin K status and bone turnover markers. During a median follow-up of 5.1 years, 33 patients sustained a fragility fracture. In Cox-proportional hazards analysis, a dp-ucMGP above median associated with incident fractures, independent of classical determinants, including age, gender, history of fracture, and aBMD (HR 2.21; 95% CI, 1.00 to 4.91; p < 0.05). In conclusion, poor vitamin K status associates with inflammation and low aBMD in patients with ESRD and confers an increased risk of incident fractures in de novo renal transplant recipients. (c) 2018 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research